Before signing, please read this:

The Case Against Symbolic Action

First it is necessary to define what I mean by “Symbolic Action”. Put simply, it is an activity that does not create any tangible change in whatever the action is targeted towards. Classic symbolic action includes petitioning, sit-ins, marches, occupations, lobbying, letter writing and many forms of direct action including what the mainstream media, and many activists refer to as “violence”. In general, symbolic actions do not break any “laws” (by which I mean legislation imposed by the system under which the action is taking place); arrests made are also, generally, symbolic, intended to demonstrate strength of authority, and rarely lead to conviction.

However, it is not so much a question of law-breaking, nor is it a question of the scale of the action or the methodology utilised: what matters is whether change is achieved as a direct result of the action. This is where the idea of “success” comes in. The definition of success of actions is a very loose currency in activist circles, particularly for mainstream NGOs and non-radical campaign groups. In very many cases we see success measured in terms of the size of a gathering, the number of politicians lobbied, the number of letters written or petitions signed, and so on. None of these can be considered “success” unless the goal of the action was merely to achieve what is being claimed; however, if the overall aim of a campaign is, for instance, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions or deforestation, then in no sense can such achievements even be considered successful, let alone have achieved genuine change. Change will have only been achieved when carbon dioxide emissions or deforestation have actually been reduced, so it is possible for an action to have been successful yet still be symbolic, i.e. it does not directly cause change.

Non-symbolic action is that which does cause change. It does not matter whether laws are broken or not – though certainly in the case of achieving social / environmental change, almost by definition “laws” will have to be broken on the way to change taking place. It does not matter how large or small an action is, and it does not matter what form the action takes: what defines whether an action is symbolic or not is whether change happened as a result of that action.

This petition is, of course, entirely ironic, but its existence underlines an important point - if platforms such as change.org, Avaaz and 38Degrees are truly places where real change originate, then vast amounts of change must have already happened, by virtue of the number of petitions created and sent off. The fact this has not happened, and the civilized world is still hellbent on destroying everything it touches, and anyone who gets in its way, is concrete evidence that PETITIONS DO NOT WORK and we have to do something non-symbolic to create change. However, as the aforementioned platforms live and die by petitions, then the success of this petition is bound to bring them down...or maybe change.org, Avaaz and 38Degrees are just sinkholes for people's hopes, dreams and fears so they don't do something that will actually create change.

Now there's an interesting thought.